UrMug is a pop-up art project that aims to bring linguistic and cultural diversity to the UM campus. As a student whose mother language is not English, I couldn’t help but feel a lack of belonging in the school. I also thought about how I’m never able to find a mug with my name on it in any stops, and had the idea of making mugs for people with their names in their mother language written on it. I believe a truly supportive & inclusive campus should represent the different languages and cultures we have.
The pop-ups happened three times over the semester, on October 24th, November 3rd and 9th. I roll the cart to the school’s diag and invited people to teach me how to write their names in their mother languages. I then wrote them down and gave the mugs to participants for free and take a Polariod of them holding the mug. I gave out around 300 mugs in total, learned many new languages, and met people coming from different cultures. You can take a closer look at the participants and their customized mugs on the Polariod films on the cart.
